


The Locker

by pacole



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bad Flirting, Crack, Father-Son Relationship, Just slightly, M/M, Pietro Logic is as Bad as Erik Logic, Swearing, about as much as you'd expect from a teenager
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 23:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17069414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pacole/pseuds/pacole
Summary: In which Pietro is an overdramatic teenager, Erik is kind of a dick, bad flirting happens, and a spoilt locker remains spoilt.Or, Pietro is constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown but neither Erik nor Charles really care.Written for X-Men X-Mas X-Change 2018





	The Locker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IreneADonovan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IreneADonovan/gifts).



> Happy Christmas! (If you celebrate it; if you don't, well, neither do I, so...)
> 
> This is written as part of the X-Men X-Mas X-Change 2018, for the wonderful [IreneADonovan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IreneADonovan)! I've been blessed with very broad requests, so I've decided to fulfil two of them (Erik/Charles and Erik & Pietro) at once. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Pietro hates his father. Like he _really_ does. He wants to drop dead right now to avoid being in the presence of the most annoying and embarrassing man on Earth for any longer.

 

“Chin up,” the aforementioned asshole says. “No need to look like it’s doomsday.”

 

“But it _is_ ,” Pietro moans, and buries his face in his hands. Where are those handy cyanide pills when he needs them? Why is it that everything useful in movies never seems to actually be around in real life?

 

Like those fairy-tale high schools which don’t have stroke-inducing timetables. Or parents who actually _respect their kids and don’t march into the school in the middle of the day to embarrass them._

 

He must have said that last bit out loud, because Erik “I have the hearing of a bat but not the sensibility to hide in a dark cave of one” Lehnsherr proceeds to reply, “I’m not here to embarrass you. I’m here to fix your locker. Which, might I add, you have been complaining about for the past two weeks.”

 

“But you didn’t have to come to school and fix it personally! And neither did you have to bring your giant toolbox, which is _bigger than my head_. Do you know how many people you’re blocking with it?” Lessons are out, and a fair number of students are now finding their path unfortunately hindered. Pietro and his dad - mainly his dad, because parents are a rare species in a high school - are also attracting some stares from nosy fuckwits. Pietro internally bemoans the loss of his street cred. 

 

“Of course I had to come.” As if to illustrate his point, Erik is currently waving a screwdriver around like a madman. The tip of it nearly smashes into the back of a girl’s head. It also doesn’t slip past Pietro that he dodges the question about the giant toolbox with the unctuousness and remorse of a politician. That is to say, truckloads of the former and none of the latter.

 

Pietro really, really, wants to disown his dad. Is that legally possible? It should be.

 

Erik continues, paying no heed to public safety (or, indeed, to Pietro’s peace of mind), “Your school management is evidently incompetent.”

 

“Dad!” Pietro squawks. “You can’t just say things like that while you’re _in school_! What if a teacher walks by and hears you?”

 

Which, because the universe loves to take successive shits on his head, is when a teacher materialises.

 

“Pietro!” Mr Xavier chirps in a scarily accurate imitation of a bird. Not the annoying kind like parrots, but the equally annoying kinds that sing at ungodly hours of the morning.

 

“Hi, Mr Xavier,” he mutters. He wants to punch the smile off Mr Xavier’s face, if only because no one should have the right to look this happy in the vicinity of the greatest asshole in the universe, Erik Lehnsherr. Then he remembers that Mr Xavier is actually nice and starts feeling guilty about wanting to punch him.

 

“And you must be Pietro’s father!” Mr Xavier continues cheerfully, oblivious to the fact that he is now talking to the worst human being ever to walk on two legs. The urge to punch him returns full-force. Will he still be arrested for assault if he’s just trying to save Mr Xavier from certain doom?

 

“Erik Lehnsherr,” his father replies, and bestows upon Mr Xavier the dubious honour of one of his shark-like smiles. Pietro is _so_ grateful that he didn’t inherit that smile. “You’re a teacher here, I presume?”

 

“Charles Xavier; I teach Pietro biology,” Mr Xavier says, reaching out a hand to shake. Pietro half-wishes that his dad will ignore that hand and thereby give nice Mr Xavier a warning that he really should clear the fuck out of here if he values his sanity, but no – Erik smoothly transfers his screwdriver into his other hand (fortunately not hitting anyone _except Pietro, and ow that hurt_ ) before shaking the proffered hand enthusiastically.

 

And for perhaps a _hint_ too long. All while staring at Mr Xavier intensely with the shark grin.

 

Is his dad actually _checking Mr Xavier out_? What the fuck. His father is checking out his teacher right in front of him. What the actual bloody fuck.

 

This cannot be his life. He really, really wants to die now. If there really is a God and that God had just a shred of mercy, he would let Pietro just sink into the floor and suffocate to avoid this even more suffocating sight.

 

The hand-shaking stops, but not the heart eyes. Pietro’s will to live refuses to return.

 

“Nice to meet you,” Erik says at last, and Pietro is sure that he’s never heard him say the words _nice_ and _meet you_ in the same sentence. “I’m just here to fix Pietro’s locker.”

 

“Oh dear,” Mr Xavier frowns. “What’s wrong with it?”

 

“Nothing a little screwing won’t fix,” Erik declares, waving his screwdriver with the zeal of a three-year-old at their own birthday party.

 

Then he _winks_.

 

Wait a second. Was that supposed to be a pick-up line? Is his dad actually chatting up his teacher in front of him?

 

Okay, Pietro tells himself, calm down. Maybe he wasn’t winking. Maybe he was just… clearing the dust from that one eye. Maybe his robotic qualities slowly began to reflect in his physical body and one of his eyes malfunctioned and can’t close. Maybe he accidentally got superglue onto the eyelids of one eye so it has to stay open and can’t blink properly.

 

Mr Xavier flashes Erik a smile. “Well, it’s awfully nice of you to come and fix it yourself. I’m sure not many parents would do that for their kids.”

 

“I like the _personal touch_ , Mr Xavier,” Erik drawls.

 

“What happened to the incompetent school management?” Pietro scoffs. Erik responds by casually pushing his face away.

 

A couple of his classmates walk by, and one of them raises an eyebrow at the scene. Pietro shakes his head miserably and mouths, _fuck my life_. They openly and wholly unsympathetically laugh at him, because teenage boys are all wankers. In more than one sense of the word.

 

“Please, call me Charles,” Mr Xavier is saying.

 

“Charles,” Erik echoes, as if tasting the word on his tongue. “Very traditional and very historical. Lots of accomplished people named Charles.”

 

“As a child, I once thought that I was destined to be the next Darwin due to our shared first name and interest in biology,” Mr Xavier admits ruefully. “Alas, it was not to be.”

 

“There might be hope for you yet. I’m sure you’re absolutely _brilliant_.”

 

Pietro’s will to live proves to be a stubborn creature and is resolutely not reappearing.

 

Mr Xavier actually blushes. “Thank you for your faith in me, my friend.” Then, as if suddenly remembering why they’re here, he adds, “I’m sorry, am I distracting you?”

 

“Oh, I assure you, you are a _very_ pleasant distraction,” Erik says. That shark grin is now a permanent fixture on his face.

 

Because Mr Xavier is either a masochist or an idiot or both, he doesn’t immediately sprint in the other direction, screaming for his life, which is what Pietro would be doing if Erik had said that to him. Instead, he asks, “What’s wrong with the locker?”

 

“A couple of screws came loose, that’s it.” Erik responds with such an understatement that Pietro is sure that _he_ is the one with a few screws loose, because the locker’s hinges are a mangled mess and the door is detaching at the same rate as Pietro’s sanity.

 

“Are you very handy with tools?”

 

“I’m certainly good with my hands.”

 

Mr Xavier smiles cryptically. “I’m sure your hands are very… capable.”

 

Holy shit, is he flirting back? Pietro is now sure that he has sorely misjudged Mr Xavier, because he is clearly not as sensible as he seems. The urge to punch him is stronger than ever, and this time, Pietro isn’t even going to feel guilty about it. But he refrains, because he would like to finish high school without getting arrested (again), thank you very much.

 

Then he notices that Mr Xavier is also gazing rather dreamily at Erik, and that’s the last straw.

 

Mr Xavier is evidently not quite right in the head, to put it lightly. He’s become too entrapped in Erik’s circle, lured in by stupid shark-grins, and is probably beyond saving. And since he has willingly fallen prey to the unspoken horrors promised by a smile with that many teeth, Pietro is now free of his self-appointed role as Mr Xavier’s protector.

 

A tiny voice niggles that he’s clearly shit at that role, but Pietro tells it to shut up. It’s the same voice that says that maybe his dad isn’t that bad or that he really should start on his homework soon, lest he sleep at three in the morning again.

 

Someone trips over the giant toolbox. Erik either doesn’t notice (possible, given how he’s fawning over Mr Xavier) or doesn’t care (equally possible). In a rare show of responsibility, Pietro apologises to her so as to clear the Lehnsherr name.

 

The tiny voice from earlier reminds him that he now has better things to do than stand around watching two grown men act like teenagers, and that thing is his _track practice, because of course you’ve forgotten again, Pietro, you fucking idiot._

 

In a rush of panic, he grabs the requisite items for track from his sorry excuse of a locker, at which point he is confronted with the reality that his locker will probably never be repaired if he leaves (not that the situation is any better with him here).

 

“Can you stop flirting with Mr Xavier and actually fix my locker? My track practice starts in five minutes,” Pietro hisses to his father, the supposed adult in the family.

 

“Then go,” Erik says, eyes never once leaving Mr Xavier. “It’ll be fixed by the time you’re done.”

 

“And it won’t be on fire?”

 

“When has the word ‘fixed’ ever meant ‘set on fire’?”

 

“You once damn near set me on fire in an attempt to, as you put it, _fix_ me.”

 

“I merely put a lit candle in your hands to help you get over your irrational fear of candles.”

 

“I was three! And I was so traumatised that that’s my earliest memory, and the next thing I remember was when I was six.”

 

“That just means that your brain is terrible at retaining memories. Hardly a surprise.”

 

“For fuck’s sake,” Pietro mutters. He doesn’t trust his dad alone with Mr Xavier, but he’s even more doubtful that his track coach will accept “I had to supervise my dad’s interaction with Mr Xavier because Mr Xavier’s really nice and my dad is Jeffrey Dahmer in the making, but then it turned out that Mr Xavier is also mental” as a valid excuse for being late, so he reluctantly runs off.

_

 

“Pietro looked like he was about to have a brain aneurysm,” Charles observes. “You could have toned down on the flirting.”

 

“Don’t pretend that you weren’t enjoying it. And you started it - by pretending that you didn’t know who I am. After that I just _had_ to play along. So it’s still your fault.”

 

“Well, look at it this way: if he looked like that at us flirting, how would he have responded to the fact that we’re actually dating?”

 

Erik grins.

 

“So you see,” Charles continues, “I was merely trying to save your son from greater mental trauma.” A pause, then, “Were you actually here to fix his locker, or did you just want to see me?”

 

“The school management is incompetent,” Erik intones.


End file.
